Cory Arcangel, Power Points, exhibition view. Courtesy the artist and DHC/ART, Montréal. Photo by Vincent Toi
Cory Arcangel is a Brooklyn based artist working in diverse media, including video, music, modified videogames, performances and the Internet. Arcangel often makes use of appropriation as a strategy to draw attention to source materials ranging from best-selling albums, Photoshop gradients and UGG boots. While bridging the gap between the highbrow and lowbrow culture, his work explores the nature of cultural production and consumption in a media and technology saturated world. On the occasion of his solo exhibition at the DHC/ART in Montréal, Arcangel talked to M-KOS about his art, his diverse influences and the role of artists as archivists.
MKOS: You started out as a musician, right? How did you make the transition to visual art?
Cory Arcangel [CA]: Its hard for me to explain, it just happened backwards, when I was in high school I was always making videos and you couldn’t go to art school to make video in 1996, so I went to music school. But I also feel in love with the history of music, so when I got out of school I was composing and I was making videos and I just put my work wherever I thought it would be cool and it’s just the gallery people who kept asking for it. So it happened kind of like an accident.
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